The Great Lakes Acoustic Music Association was formed in 1998 by musicians in the Southwestern Michigan area. The organization is dedicated to the promotion, performance and preservation of music played on acoustic stringed instruments. Bluegrass, folk, traditional and mountain music are a few good examples in this category.

Jam Sessions

Workshops

Educational Programs for Youth

Sponsored Concerts

Benefits

Events such as picnics where you can meet fellow musicians

Opportunities for all to sing along, play along, or just listen to music in a relaxed atmosphere

The Deep Fried Pickles are a delectable musical treat. They pride themselves on making jug-a-billy music that would make Hee-Haw's Grandpa Jones shake, rattle and roll over in his grave.  Founded in '00 as a jug band, 'DFPP' now mixes other American roots forms into the breading batter as well.  Bluegrass, Folk, Rockabilly, Blues and Honky-Tonk tunes pepper their set lists.

The musical phenomenon's performances include hillbilly-style punk-rock covers and rollicking original tunes.

Recent performance venues include TELLURIDE BLUEGRASS FESTIVAL in Colorado and SUNSHINE DAYDREAMS GARCIA B-DAY BASH  in West Virginia, as well as venues across North America.

The Pickles have shared the bill with BELA FLECK, String Cheese Incident, Yonder Mountain String Band, George Clinton, Derek Trucks Band and ANI DE FRANCO, among many others.

'SPIN' music magazine features an interview with the Pickles in the October 2004 issue, in the 'Jamband Food Pyramid' article.

'Jamcam Chronicles- In the Spotlight' DVD features an interview and Garcia Bash performance.

What sets the Pickles apart as a band is the fact that they can play kids shows, adult shows and then host a "KinderMusic " kids instrument building workshop all in the same day. Their flexibility and devotion to music education have made them a popular act to book for festival promoters and talent buyers.

The band was featured in an  episode of 'Postcards From Buster', a spin-off of "Arthur" on PBS Kids, which has millions of viewers worldwide.  The show aired on October 11th. The episode was entitled, 'Meet Me at the Fair'. (#101) Check your local listings for re-broadcast airtimes.

The DFPP's second album, 'Attack of the Pickles', was released in September of 2003.  Its single, 'Picklejuice' won a John Lennon Songwriting Contest Finalist Award for 2003. The Pickles also make an appearance on new new Fred Eaglesmith tribute album, '20 Odd Hollers II'. The latest DFPP album to surface is named 'Live from the Trailer Trash Tour', and was released in the Spring of 2004. The band is currently recording a new album, which will be available just before their Summer 2005 U.S. tour.

STRANGE GROOVE has delivered fresh funk to Kalamazoo weekly since 2000.

11:00pm Mustard Plug

If you've seen them play live, at one of those shows where the ceiling is dripping with sweat, the stage is on the verge of breaking in half, and the band and the crowd are just too damn busy rocking to notice the imminent threat to their lives and well being; well then, you know what I mean.

So far under the radar that mainstream press will never know, so far beyond the latest trend that most critics don't even bother, Mustard Plug know too much to turn back now.

With their new album, Yellow # 5, this Michigan six-piece wrote and produced the album that has come closest to capturing the same heart-pounding, death defying sound as their live show while showcasing their unique blend of ska, rock, pop and punk. The music is fun, passionate, energetic and catchier than you can even imagine.

The band's debut album - "Big Daddy Multitude," which first put them in a national spotlight (albeit a fairly dim one) came out in 1993 on seminal ska-label Moon Records and was followed by 4 years of non stop touring throughout the US. In 1997 the band came out with its break-through album "Evildoers Beware." An influential album released just prior to the frenzied peak of the American mainstream acceptance of ska-punk, Evildoers Beware received an overwhelming response from fans and sold more than 70,000 copies, an amazing figure for a then infantile independent punk label Hopeless Records. For "Pray for Mojo," the follow-up to "Evildoers Beware," the band returned to the production team of legendary punk duo, Bill Stevenson and Stephen Egerton (Descendents, All) who's hand helped show off the band's evolving songwriting while keeping the Mustard Plug ball steadily rolling along.

In a music scene filled with false 'me-too' types hopping on the next bandwagon, Mustard Plug's new album ''Yellow # 5'' revels in it's authenticity and true punk rock attitude. Ska fans, rock fans, punk fans and just about any random bastard you'd care to meet will feel the authenticity of this record and of a band doing what it was meant to do. 10 years, 1000 shows, over 100,000 records sold: still no sell out. Mustard Plug are doing just fine.

Friday Happy hour with The Skeletones

Melvin English has been in the music business for 25 years, he started learning the bass in 1975 with the talents of Dr. Bones and Willie Woods of Jr. Walker and the All-Stars band. He has been on the move ever since, touring on the road with one of the many Drifters shows, playing with various show bands in the U.S., Europe, and South Korea. He has performed with the Coasters, The Platters, Jewel Aikins, Lewis Wilson, and Today's People's Micheal Walden. Melvin has been involved in many recordings past & present.

Bobby R. Wilson is a rhythm guitarist and lead and background vocalist. Wilson was voted Blues Man of the Month by the Kalamazoo Valley Blues Association in May 1999. He was born March 25, 1956, in Chicago, Illinois, and moved from Chicago to Kalamazoo, Michigan in 1979.

His 25-year musical background consists of gospel, R&B, blues, and theatre. Bobby's extraordinary talent has taken him around the U.S. and abroad, performing with well-know gospel groups such as, Michigan Nightingales, Heirs of Harmony, Five Keys, True Life Singers, and the Gospel Lites of Chicago, Illinois. His experience as a guitarist led him to the theatre with on-stage plays; Beehive, Tamboreens to Glory, The Wiz, Once Upon an Island, and Just Say Yes Lord, which toured throughout the U.S. and the Virgin Islands. Some of the local groups he has performed with are, Touch Band, 24-K, Buddy Libido, Work In Progress, and his current role with Dr. Bones and the Skeletons Featuring Lady-T, which he joined in 1998.

Melvin Seals, whose musical roots seep deep into gospel soil, has always been seeking that point where music merges with spirit, what he calls “church vibe.” He found it with Jerry Garcia over two decades ago, and he is finding it again in the new JGB.

Melvin Seals has had a powerful presence in the music industry for over 30 years, playing with the likes of Chuck Berry, Charlie Daniels and Elvin Bishop. The powerful keyboardist was playing with Bishop one memorable night back in 1980:

“This big guy, he was just playing a Fender Rhodes. But he was playing it so tasty…He was just playing the tastiest little stuff, I thought, This guy is just too much! I asked him what his names was. He said Melvin Seals.”
Jerry Garcia, on meeting Melvin Seals

It was early 1980 and the Jerry Garcia Band was looking for a new keyboardist. “Melvin started playing with us, and he was just a monster. He turned out to be the guy that we were looking for all along.” Jerry Garcia

“I had no idea what was going on,” Melvin recalls of his early days with the Jerry Garcia Band. “I was fresh out of the church and suddenly I was in a strange place where all the locals had skeletons with flowers in their hair. I didn’t talk much, I was shy, playing the organ and getting out of there as soon as I could.”

Melvin’s fears that he had stumbled into some kind of satanic cult were laid to rest when he talked with Jerry about the skeletons. “I realized that it was just what it was. It made me feel a whole lot better. Jerry knew the Bible inside out. He respected my values. I saw that these were peaceful people.”

Jerry’s music spoke to Melvin in a language all its own. “There was church vibe all over the music, a sacredness vibe, it was like what’s known in church as a spiritual experience. Musically, I felt compatible. The way I played the organ was exactly what Jerry wanted.”

Fifteen years later Jerry was gone and it was another seven years before Melvin heard the Jerry sound again. It was last summer at a concert in the Rockies when Melvin played for the first time with a New Jersey-based Grateful Dead tribute band called Ripple and felt compelled to start a new JGB band.

“There are a lot of cover bands but these guys are different,” Melvin observes. Ron Penque has a voice just like Jerry – you close your eyes and it’s Jerry. Jimmy Saluzzi plays guitar identical to Jerry, right down to the mistakes, right chords, right timing, it’s the church vibe.”

“It only took 24 years to do this,” says Jimmy Saluzzi the new JGB’s lead guitar and vocals. “I understand how Jerry thinks. Every Jerry band, they play the same rock scale, they don’t play that intricate walkdown, updown, triplets. You don’t stay in one scale, you got to work it, start off low at the bottom of the scale, bring it up the middle of the neck, then at the last fret, you can’t overplay your notes, you’ve got to tease it. If you jumped into a high note, where are you going to go? You have to know how to stretch a screen in between frets, out of tune, bring it in tune. I love it!”

Relentlessly reaching for the totality of the Jerry sound, Jimmy
is now working at a feverish level of intensity to get the finger picking down to perfection on his handcrafted T.W. Doyle guitar. When Jimmy Saluzzi speaks of getting Jerry Garcia absolutely right, from sweeping concept to tiniest nuance, a throb in his voice echoes the “sacredness vibe” that first connected Melvin Seals to Jerry Garcia.

“We first saw the Jerry Garcia Band in ’78 at the Capital Theater,” recalls Ron Penque bassist/vocalist whose voice brings Jerry back for Melvin. Ron and Jimmy grew up together in Northern New Jersey with Jerry Garcia’s music the defining motif of their adolescence. “We’ve been doing it for twenty-five years and at some point it became more of a style that we were taught by the masters – it became a part of us.”

Another Bergen County kid whose musical life shaped itself to the Jerry sound was the versatile Johnny Markowski, a songwriter like his father Thomas Jefferson Kaye.

“I had my first band in the fourth grade; it was called Four Wheel Drive. I was the drummer,” recalls Johnny, a dynamo who’s been putting bands together ever since.

Johnny became known with Stir Fried, a jam band he co-formed, for which he wrote all the songs, and sang lead. He joined Ripple several months ago and with characteristic verve worked on getting the guys a chance to play with Melvin Seals and the cycle came full circle. Just as Jerry found in Melvin the keyboardist he had been seeking, Melvin has found in Ripple the Jerry he had lost. Johnny expresses what they’re all feeling:

“Jerry Garcia Band was my absolute favorite band in the world and I’m honored to be able to carry on the torch and play homage to the heart and feel and tones. I’m honored to be playing with Melvin Seals who blew me away at every concert I went to. We’re all honored to be KEEPERS OF THE FLAME.”

Song Samples Available on the Media Page 

So many ask, why bluegrass music? So many answers, of course, but mostly we just have a passion for making music. With wood boxes, a couple dozen copper wound wires, and plastic picks, we can play anywhere. Our instruments lend well to plugs and gadgets. Yet, they work on the beach, in the pines, or in some guy’s garage.
What we play is roots music; not partial to hill, island, or river. The tradition that we participate in is more than old Appalachian fiddle tunes, it is a celebration of friendship and joy. It brings pleasure to know that many before us have come together for the same circle of sound. Our own music is created traditionally: we wrote it to have fun playing and to share with others.

What sets the Pickles apart as a band is the fact that they can play kids shows, adult shows and then host a "KinderMusic " kids instrument building workshop all in the same day. Their flexibility and devotion to music education have made them a popular act to book for festival promoters and talent buyers.

The band was featured in an  episode of 'Postcards From Buster', a spin-off of "Arthur" on PBS Kids, which has millions of viewers worldwide.  The show aired on October 11th. The episode was entitled, 'Meet Me at the Fair'. (#101) Check your local listings for re-broadcast airtimes.

Come out, make your own instruments and play with the Deep Fried Pickles!

5:00pm The Kalamazoo Big Band

8:00pm Contrabando

Contrabando developed their musical talents on the beautiful Island of

the Dominican Republic. Contrabando relocated to the United States in 2000.  2003 found Contrabando calling Grand Rapids, Michigan home.

This nine piece ensemble brings the entire tropical flavor from the

Caribbean Islands. They perform a mixture of Merengue, Bachata, Salsa, Rumba,Bomba, Cumbia and many other types of Caribbean rhythms.

Contrabando has a horn

section which is unmatched in the Midwest and Johnny Mercedes's strong vocalmake them stand head and shoulders above other Latin bands.

Contrabando break out performance at the St. Joseph Latin / Reggae

Festival left the attendees begging for more. They were the headline act for the Grand Rapids "Soul in the City' Festival. And have been invited back to the Holland Tulipanes Festival after their unforgettable performance. Contrabando guarantee to have their audience dancing in no time!

12:00am The Verve Pipe

They released their first independent album in the fall of 1992, I've Suffered a Head Injury. Stout was dropped in 1993 and was replaced by A.J. Dunning. The same year, they released their second independent album, Pop Smear. Through constant touring, they developed a strong reputation and rabid following in their home state, selling out larger venues and eventually selling a combined total of more than 40,000 copies of their first two albums.

In 1995, the Verve Pipe signed to RCA Records, releasing their major label debut, Villains, the following year. The album spent fifteen weeks in Billboard's Heatseekers chart and the single, "Photograph," saw respectable airplay on alternative radio and MTV. Keyboardist Doug Corella was added as a full-time member the same year.

After spending a full year touring and promoting Villains, including an opening spot for Kiss on the European leg of their much-hyped reunion tour, the Verve Pipe finally began to make some headway in early 1997, when a re-recorded version of "The Freshmen" -- originally on the group's debut, I've Suffered a Head Injury -- was released as a single. By the spring, "The Freshmen" had become a number one modern rock hit and a Top Ten pop hit, sending the album into the Top 40 and into gold status as well. The Verve Pipe's self-titled follow-up appeared in mid-1999. In 2001, the Verve Pipe released Underneath with producer Adam Schlesinger